1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a parts production management system capable of linking parts to be processed in a production line in units of a lot and a method thereof.
Priority is claimed on Japanese Patent Application No. 2006-205061, filed Jul. 27, 2006, the content of which is incorporated herein by reference.
2. Description of the Related Art
Quality control methods in which a product and a production process thereof are linked together for management and the production process of a product can be traced retrospectively so as to determine the production process causing a problem by using the linking when there is a defect in the product have been used.
For example, in Japanese Unexamined Patent Application, First Publication No. 10-43997, there is disclosed a system for supporting data analysis of lots of products by creating a table defining the linking relationship between processes when a division event occurs in the processes and linking the lots between the processes using the table.
In Japanese Unexamined Patent Application, First Publication No. 2004-227184, a method of building a quality database and the apparatus the same are disclosed in which, in a packaging process or a point of changing a lot size for a processing operation for products, a configuration of parts are registered as a part tree, a configuration of process flows for management of an engineering process of the registered parts is registered, and registering quality data for management of processing information belonging to the registered processes.
However, in the above-described prior arts, although linking between parent lots and child lots is described, technology of detailed means for the linking process is not described.
In other words, when a linking operation between the parent lots and child lots is performed, a parent lot to be linked is required to be determined when a child lot generated from the parent lot is to be unloaded.
However, since input of the parent lot and loading of the child lot are performed at different locations, there is a problem in that the parent lot to be linked cannot be determined in an easy manner for a production line having no one to one correspondence or a production line through which different types of lots flow concurrently.